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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—Google I/O 2018 has officially kicked off, and with it come more details on the latest version of Android. A public beta for Android P, as it's still known, is out today for those who want to try the software for themselves. The usual caveats with installing unfinished software still apply.

Further Reading

As for the update itself, the biggest news in Preview 1 was a new design style that was applied to the notification panel, main settings screen, and some system UI bits. Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke recapped a couple of features that had already been announced in that earlier preview, including a simplified volume control widget and the option to change the screen orientation even when you've locked the device in portrait mode.

Perhaps the most immediately noticeable new feature, however, is a new set of gesture controls that trade Android's traditional home and recent apps buttons for a setup similar to what Apple does with its iPhone X. Swiping up from a flatter button at the bottom of the screen will now display a horizontal (not vertical!) list of your recent apps, with icons for five "predicted apps" placed underneath them. Swiping up a second time from there will display the all apps screen, effectively allowing you to access it from anywhere on the phone. You can also slide the home button sideways to start scrolling through recent apps. The icons for those recent apps appear to be larger than before, and Google showed off the ability to highlight text within them. The back button is still there but not as a global key; it instead appears to only show up in certain contexts, such as the new recent apps screen and particular applications.

Beyond that, Burke said Android P will have an "adaptive battery" feature that essentially makes your phone more aggressive about shutting down apps you don't use and prioritizing power for ones you do. An "adaptive brightness" will work similarly to ensure the phone screen's brightness is more appropriately set for your surroundings.

Enlarge/ Non-Google phones will be able to access the Android P beta for the first time.

Nathan Mattise

Also new is a feature Google calls "app actions," which will surface shortcuts for frequently used apps within Search, the app launcher, highlighted text options, and other places throughout the UI. The idea is to have Android P predict not only what app you're likely to use, but also what things within certain apps you're most likely to do next. If you use Fandango frequently to order movie tickets, for instance, you'll see quick options to get tickets from that app when you search for a particular movie. Or when you plug in headphones, you might see an action from Spotify to fire up a playlist.

Likewise, a previously discovered "Slices" feature will display small functions of apps within Search. Making a Google search for "Hawaii," for example, could display previews of any relevant photos you have stored in the Google Photos app. Searching for "Lyft," to use another example Google noted, could show you the price and time estimate for a trip to work, then let you order the ride without having to open the Lyft app. Google is pushing features like this as part of a wider focus on "simplicity" in Android P.

Google is also making it a point to list "digital wellbeing" as a pillar of the update, and to that end, the company detailed a new Dashboard app that will break down how much time you've spent in particular apps, how often you've unlocked your phone, and how many notifications you've received, among other items designed to make you more conscious of how glued you are to your phone. The company says developers will be able to break down these stats further within the dashboard; YouTube, for example, will show exactly how much time you've spent watching on desktop and on mobile.

Building on that, Android P will also feature an "app timer" that lets you impose a time limit on how much you want to use a particular app over the course of a day. A notification will pop up when you hit your limit, and the icon of the app itself will be grayed out once you've passed it. (Though you can still use the app afterward if you want.)

Along with that, a new "shush" gesture will make it so the phone automatically goes into Do Not Disturb mode and will thus turn off all pings and vibrations when you flip it on its face. A "starred contacts" feature will allow preferred people in your contacts list to get through if needed, however.

Finally, there's a "wind down" mode aimed at preventing you from falling into a phone-using rabbit hole before going to bed: Google says you can tell the Google Assistant to "set wind down" for a specific time, at which point it will set your phone screen in a grayscale mode and turn on Do Not Disturb until the morning.

Besides the additions to Android, Google used its I/O keynote to detail wider updates to the Google Assistant, Google Maps, Google News, and Gmail, among other things. Android P, meanwhile, has a long way to go until its final release—Google still has three more developer previews planned, with a final consumer build scheduled for Q3 2018.

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Ron Amadeo
Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work. Emailron@arstechnica.com//Twitter@RonAmadeo

56 Reader Comments

I've always found gestures and swipes slower than just tapping a button. And I know my parents have trouble with doing swipe (and long press) actions accurately. It seems so backwards in terms of usability.

Also, if you're going to do swipes, at least do it like the iPhone X (and before that, Blackberry, and before that, Palm, etc.) and find a way to remove the space wasting navbar (when using gestures).

Adaptive brightness and more aggressive background app control? It seems like they've been recycling those particular bullet points for the last three or four versions of Android. Maybe they're using an old Powerpoint presentation by accident?

"Perhaps the most immediately noticeable feature Burke detailed on stage is a new set gesture controls that can replace Android's traditional home button, somewhat akin to what Apple includes with its iPhone X. "

I've always found gestures and swipes slower than just tapping a button. And I know my parents have trouble with doing swipe (and long press) actions accurately. It seems so backwards in terms of usability.

Also, if you're going to do swipes, at least do it like the iPhone X and find a way to remove the space wasting navbar (when using gestures).

The phone should come with a "training course" to learn the gestures. The training course obviously being an app.

Adaptive brightness and more aggressive background app control? It seems like they've been recycling those particular bullet points for the last three or four versions of Android. Maybe they're using an old Powerpoint presentation by accident?

Sounds like Samsung circa 5 years ago.

The aggressive closing of apps is infuriating. That's not to say that less "optimized" versions of Android always do the right thing, but it's definitely possible to tune the battery saving to be too aggressive.

Perhaps the most immediately noticeable feature Burke detailed on stage is a new set gesture controls that can replace Android's traditional home button, somewhat akin to what Apple includes with its iPhone X. Swiping up from a flatter button at the bottom of the screen will display a horizontal (not vertical!) list of your recent apps, with icons for five "predicted apps" placed underneath them. Swiping up a second time from there will display the all apps screen, effectively allowing you to access it from anywhere on the phone.

More than somewhat akin to WebOS, as well. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen (or pressing the home button) worked pretty similarly there. Swiping up once brought up your open cards (serving a similar function to recent apps), and at the bottom displayed icons of your pinned (not predicted) favorite apps; swiping up a second time brought up the all apps list.

Adaptive brightness and more aggressive background app control? It seems like they've been recycling those particular bullet points for the last three or four versions of Android. Maybe they're using an old Powerpoint presentation by accident?

Sounds like Samsung circa 5 years ago.

The aggressive closing of apps is infuriating. That's not to say that less "optimized" versions of Android always do the right thing, but it's definitely possible to tune the battery saving to be too aggressive.

I agree. I hope there's a setting to "stop killing this damn app in the background you stupid operating system"

Not that this isn't a lost cause beating a dead horse or anything; but I'll be interested to see what team security research either PoCs or discovers team Consumer Analytics deploying in terms of cool new techniques based on these 'app actions' and 'slices':

Unless I misunderstand the plan, these features won't be possible(or, if architecturally possible, will be less 'rich' or whatever) with just passive information about what an application's capabilities are(the way that you can see what applications can handle a given file or URI, based on their manifests, without actually showing all the applications what you are trying to open and asking them if they can handle it).

This suggests that the application, or at least a limited bit of it designed to be set up acceptably quickly and survive being torn down equally rapidly, gets run and gets to look at the contextual data whenever the OS guesses that it might be time to 'surface' something.

Given the generally sterling reputation of 3rd party apps in the mobile hellspace; I'm not sure that having the OS just guess about which one needs to be handed a chunk of information about what you are doing at any given second is a good idea. Is there some sort of control in place; or is the idea that anything you have installed should be something you are OK with having handed a chunk of context whenever some heuristic decides that it might be the right answer?

(By way of example: does using fandango to purchase tickets when the kids want to see $SUMMER_MOVIE in theaters imply that you want fandango to know about any movie you happen to search for? It would be pretty subtle for the OS' heuristics to discern the fact that you prefer not to share your enthusiasm for grindhouse and/or freaky porn with the app you use to buy tickets to kiddie movies; and unless the OS has innate knowledge of "what movies are even in theaters, anyway?" it will have to pass just about anything that looks like a movie to fandango to see if it has an offer for you(it would be easy enough to bodge that special case, since, except for theaters that do re-releases and such you could mostly exclude any films that are older; but that wouldn't work in the general case, since the criteria governing when an app can or cannot take useful action would vary widely depending on the details of the context: fandango can only usefully sell you tickets to stuff in major theater release; ebay can bring up results for stuff that had a laserdisk release in Japan 20 years ago; so 'only pass new movies to app' isn't a helpful rule).

Especially if an app is feeling grabby about data(and when aren't they?) it seems like describing yourself as technically usable for the widest possible range of 'surfacing' or 'slice' embedding contexts would be a great way to get informed of what a user is doing, even when they have no intention or desire to interact with your app, in the greatest number of contexts. This sort of racing to the bottom would likely also make the 'surfacing' behavior less useful, even if you are A-OK with the implications, since every appy has an incentive to get launched and handed your data by being 'useful' in context; which means that there is little incentive to stick to your strengths and much incentive to be 'useful' at anything you can remotely claim to be adequate for. I'm not surprised that a search engine company would think that it's a good idea; but I'm less convinced.)

"Perhaps the most immediately noticeable feature Burke detailed on stage is a new set gesture controls that can replace Android's traditional home button, somewhat akin to what Apple includes with its iPhone X. "

Adaptive brightness and more aggressive background app control? It seems like they've been recycling those particular bullet points for the last three or four versions of Android. Maybe they're using an old Powerpoint presentation by accident?

Well, this version of adaptive brightness is different in that it tailors the brightness profile to each user. The adaptive battery feature sounds similar to the initiatives we've seen the past few years to consolidate background app processing and minimize wake locks, but it looks like it adds a machine learning wrinkle by selecting which apps are throttled based on a user's usage.

The thing about iterative improvements is that they add up over the long run.

If we are going to give credit, dont say "iPhone X-like gesture controls" since its WebOS like more than anything... On that still in 2018 no-one does it better than Palm did in 2009 with Web OS... WTF?

"Perhaps the most immediately noticeable feature Burke detailed on stage is a new set gesture controls that can replace Android's traditional home button, somewhat akin to what Apple includes with its iPhone X. "

Didn't that come from Palm originally?

Yes, it did in 2009 with WebOS. That was of course 8 years before Apple "invented" it /s

If we are going to give credit, dont say "iPhone X-like gesture controls" since its WebOS like more than anything... On that still in 2018 no-one does it better than Palm did in 2009 with Web OS... WTF?

I've been using Android P for the last hour, and the gesture navigation is pretty different compared to iOS's implementation. Not sure how it compares to Palm's or BlackBerry's versions since I never used those.

I've always found gestures and swipes slower than just tapping a button. And I know my parents have trouble with doing swipe (and long press) actions accurately. It seems so backwards in terms of usability.

Also, if you're going to do swipes, at least do it like the iPhone X and find a way to remove the space wasting navbar (when using gestures).

The phone should come with a "training course" to learn the gestures. The training course obviously being an app.

Nooooo! I make a fair bit of money showing my clients how to use the new features of their phones. If these companies start making it easy to figure out, I'll have to find something else to do! /s

Well, only half /s since I do actually make money on this stuff. It's simply ridiculous that these companies assume everyone will be able to figure this stuff out right out of the box. We aren't all geeks who read this sort of article to prepare us for this sort of change, after all! Some training the more common users would be a great idea. Honestly, it's a little ridiculous how it's gotten. I should be making money fixing tech issues, not teaching folks how to use supposedly intuitive but critical features of their devices. There's no excuse for this.

I've always found gestures and swipes slower than just tapping a button. And I know my parents have trouble with doing swipe (and long press) actions accurately. It seems so backwards in terms of usability.

Also, if you're going to do swipes, at least do it like the iPhone X and find a way to remove the space wasting navbar (when using gestures).

The phone should come with a "training course" to learn the gestures. The training course obviously being an app.

Nooooo! I make a fair bit of money showing my clients how to use the new features of their phones. If these companies start making it easy to figure out, I'll have to find something else to do! /s

Well, only half /s since I do actually make money on this stuff. It's simply ridiculous that these companies assume everyone will be able to figure this stuff out right out of the box. We aren't all geeks who read this sort of article to prepare us for this sort of change, after all! Some training the more common users would be a great idea. Honestly, it's a little ridiculous how it's gotten. I should be making money fixing tech issues, not teaching folks how to use supposedly intuitive but critical features of their devices. There's no excuse for this.

The training course should be in demo mode on the phone. When the iPhone first arrived, I found it very unnatural. Android made a bit more sense without a guide, but this is really silly. A guide is not that hard to do.

I'm on a OP5. The swipe to answer a call is backwards from any phone I ever used. I hung up on people when I first got the phone. There are rants on reddit about this. Finally someone came up with to answer a call, you pull the icon towards you, and to reject the caller, you push it away.

I've always found gestures and swipes slower than just tapping a button. And I know my parents have trouble with doing swipe (and long press) actions accurately. It seems so backwards in terms of usability.

Also, if you're going to do swipes, at least do it like the iPhone X (and before that, Blackberry, and before that, Palm, etc.) and find a way to remove the space wasting navbar (when using gestures).

It is backwards and electronics companies don't give a crap about older people. Try and get most senior citizens to figure out even an iPhone. We also went from relatively simple for seniors VHS to DVD and Blu-Ray, with the later two unadoptable for most seniors. I know, I've tried many times with many seniors older than me. How about the TVs now? Good Lord.

Many of you young people on this site are in these industries and one day you're going to be old too. Remember that. Listen to what your parents and older relatives are saying before you design things so difficult for older people to enjoy.

The ironic thing about it is that seniors will be much more reliant on such things than younger people as they become less mobile or bed ridden. Make their last days enjoyable. My mother passed away recently and it was impossible on her own to figure out which buttons to press or which remote to use just to watch TV. When me and my brother were not there to help her she spent her time staring off into the distance. Heartbreaking. Technology should make life easier, not more difficult.

Horizontal multitasking that decreases the number of clearly identified open apps and removes completely the visual hint that there are further apps as well as a large navigation bar for a navigation system meant to be invisible. Cool. I see Google's war on information density continues unabated.

Traditional back, home, recent, not gestures that don't work or bring me to wrong place. Most importantly what about under the hood technology, ways of handling information, speed of parts, imaging etc? Size of P OS? Assume Ars will have more to say.

Last year when the iPhone X was announced, I had a truly enjoyable argument with an Android-using friend who slammed everything - the notch, facial recognition, and the gestures.

My reply to it all in the end was "See you next year, when Android is doing all the same shit."

checks watch

Hey look! They're ahead of schedule!

I kid, I kid, because Android isn't copying iOS. As many commenters are noting, they're both ripping off Palm, ten years after webOS devices demonstrated how good a well-implemented gesture system could be compared to buttons. It's just a shame that nobody is using physical keyboards anymore, because "Just Type" was also a much better way to access the reams of apps and contacts and documents that now live on a modern smartphone. Both of them now have universal search built-in, of course, but both require you to start the process with some combination of taps or swipes as opposed to just snapping open the keyboard and, well, just typing.

While we're on the subject of Palm and webOS, universal messaging and app stacks would be nice to have back too, please!

Buttons are more intuitive. But with bezels getting very small, Android and iOS needed gestures. Whether other OS's (Blackberry, MeeGo, WebOs, Windows 8) had gestures before isn't all that important. Google doesn't add a feature because it is the first, but because it seems useful.

Yeah yeah, I know, but it was still an inarguably excellent idea. Nowadays my conversations are spread across an unholy combination of SMS, iMessage, WhatsApp, and Messenger and I get really tired of remembering who uses what sometimes.

The navigation change is particularly disappointing. I'd prefer to have the capability to view more than three recent applications on screen.

On larger phones, that interaction looks as if it'd be easier to reach the end if you use your right hand, but I suppose they can shorten the track if it proves to be an issue and or have track length respond to DPI.

I hope they don't get carried away with this because of the iPhone X. I cant' say it's the most intuitive iPhone to operate. Task switching is still annoying as hell in my hands.

The real innovation is having a screen take up (nearly) the whole device by removing all buttons. Palm didn't do that — it had a physical home button just like the iPhone (although it brought up the app switcher instead of the launcher).

The other significant innovation is the newer phones have gestures that do completely different things depending on the speed and length of the swipe. Palm had nothing like this either.

Since the gestures are different in some important ways, you could only say they "copied" Palm if you define Palm as the first device to ever have gestures — which it wasn't.

The first Multitouch device to ship was in 1999 by a small company nobody has ever heard of called "Fingerworks Technology". Apple purchased this company a year before the iPhone launch — although patents show Apple was working on similar things internally long before that, and Palm's device shipped fully 10 years after Fingerworks's first product.

I've always found gestures and swipes slower than just tapping a button. And I know my parents have trouble with doing swipe (and long press) actions accurately. It seems so backwards in terms of usability.

Also, if you're going to do swipes, at least do it like the iPhone X (and before that, Blackberry, and before that, Palm, etc.) and find a way to remove the space wasting navbar (when using gestures).

This. Buttons are more intuitive for normal people. Apple did gestures because they got rid of the physical home button. Google never had this problem as they already have on-screen buttons. There's really no reason to switch to gestures on Android, other than copying what's "trendy." (just like how the OEMs are doing notches for no reason, ie. still have a large chin).

Palm had a physical button for the app switcher and a swipe gesture for the app launcher.

Android P and iPhone X don't have a physical button, and they have multiple gestures for various actions instead of just the single gesture on Palm.

The real innovation is having a screen take up (nearly) the whole device by removing all buttons. Palm didn't do that.

The other significant innovation is the newer phones have gestures that do completely different things depending on the speed and length of the swipe. Palm had nothing like this either..

Actually, the physical button was dropped from the Palm Pre after the first version. The Pre 2, Pre 3, Veer, and Pixi just reacted to a tap on the capacitive "gesture area". Given the way that Apple has now isolated it's new "home bar" (I'm not sure what the official name is) from the rest of the UI it's functionally the same thing, even if the devices now have edge-to-edge screens.

Palm also did have different gestures based on speed and length of swipe.

* A swipe up would go to card view, and then a second swipe would bring up the launcher* A swipe and hold would bring up a quick launch "wave" - basically a floating app dock* A half swipe left or right would go back or forward* A full swipe left or right would switch apps

Horizontal multitasking that decreases the number of clearly identified open apps and removes completely the visual hint that there are further apps as well as a large navigation bar for a navigation system meant to be invisible. Cool. I see Google's war on information density continues unabated.

And people complain about Samsung.

Yeah this sucks, I hope there's an option to have the current multitasking view.